Money saving sites

Whether you’re looking for airfares or hotels, you’ve probably used a search engine to find a great deal. There are obvious search engines to save money, and a few newbies that are less obvious.

There are so many great deal sites that offer emails delivered right to your Inbox every morning. It’s a good idea to create an email address specifically for deals if you don’t want to deal with a cluttered Inbox every day. That way you can check the offers when you’re in the market for a deal. Or, just hit delete each day.

iDine Deals is only available in Houston and Cleveland. It offers daily deals of 50% or more off restaurants. Like so many of the other sites, you can have the deals emailed right to your Inbox.

GROUPON — this site offers daily deals for businesses and restaurants close to your home.

The other catch — the daily deal is only offered if an unspecified number of people sign up for the deal. You sign up by giving your credit card. It’s only charged if that minimum is met.

The plus – Groupon groupies say the savings are extensive off the retail price.

Living Social is similar to Groupon. The big difference — you don’t need a certain number of people for the deal to go live.

Hey Butler allows you to search for savings and discounts at local businesses. You can search by category and see buy one get one free offers and so on.

Kudzu offers discount coupons for local businesses. It’s not currently available in KC, but does link you to local businesses by category.

Restaurant dot com provides great discounts to local restaurants. Several times a month, the deals are almost too good to be true. You can buy a $20 gift certificate at the restaurant for $2. You just need the promotional code, which is easy to find by searching Restaurant.com promotional code in a search engine.

The really good restaurants typically sell out fast, and there are exclusions for some restaurants including alcohol and days of the week that you can use the coupon.

WOOT – Woot also offers a discounted item every day. However, some users find it difficult to navigate and report that the deals are not as consistently money savers.

If you like the site, you can follow it on Twitter to find specials that are launched certain hours of the day. Woot calls them Happy Hour specials.

The deals are placed on the site at 12 a.m. Central time every day of the week. Once the item sells out, the deal is done until the next day.

KASHLESS – This Web site allows anyone to post or receive free stuff while earning reward points. The goal is to reuse and recycle products with a reward. You earn points that you can cash in to receive free items.

The Web site says, “By providing a comprehensive platform for reuse, Kashless extends the useful life of products, diverts significant amount of items from the waste stream, encourages local consumption, and reduces raw material resource demand.”

Consumers can browse by city, neighborhood, and category. Some of the deals are a bit unusual like jigsaw puzzles and baby wipe containers.

ToolzDo- The Web site is a self-described “Swiss Army™ knife for building community.” The site provides tools for neighbors to meet each other and rent, swap, or give away items.

The site says it can be used for neighbors to share crime information, organize a block party, find non-profits near your home, or ask local business experts a question. Again, you need to join but it’s free.

VOYIJ - It takes the deals from all the other travel websites and puts them in one location for you to search. You put in your departing city, general travel dates, destination, deal type, and budget.

You can also subscribe to its Twitter feed to find money saving deals.

KAYAK – It also searches the airline sites and money saving sites to give you one stop shopping for the best deal. It lists times and prices, and gives you a link to the site where that deal was found.

Promotional Code Savings
There are websites that offer rewards programs to give you cash back when you use a certain number of promotional codes or links. Fat Wallet If you link to a store through their site, you can save money and earn cash back. Most of the stores are national chains.

Ebates works in a similar fashion. It offers promotional codes, coupons, and cash back when you click on the link to the store through the Ebates site.

Do you have a favorite money saving site? Share it with our community.

Consumer Watchdog

I've been a consumer reporter for 13 years, and enjoy sharing my tips and tricks with viewers. My investigations have saved consumers millions of dollars, and have been awarded 3 Edward R. Murrow Awards and 2 Emmy awards. After working in South Bend, Kansas City, and Cleveland, I'm proud to call South Florida Home -- what I consider to be ground zero of consumer issues and ripoffs. I look forward to helping you.

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